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Three years, two EPs and one album since his Siberian sojourn, Brendan Mulvihill of Norwegian Arms has turned his focus away from the confines of his tiny apartment in the Taiga, which largely informed the songs on their debut LP, Wolf Like a Stray Dog. That doesn't mean that the sunny folk music generated by his time in Tomsk, Russia has become any less relevant, or that the sound has changed drastically. Instead, it's morphed from real-time cultural awe and suffering to nostalgia, and while the memories remain, new ones have taken their place. That being said, nothing has, or perhaps ever will, replace the childhood mandolin on which these songs are written, perhaps the only constant in this ever-evolving project.

In the time since returning to his native Philadelphia, Birthday has found new beauty in the wreckage that surrounds his post-industrial warehouse apartment. Dilapidated buildings, shifting friendships, and late night bicycle rides inform this new batch of songs, a celebration of deeper personal understanding. Still deeply influenced by his continued travels, these new songs draw from trips to South America and Europe, and the sense of Wanderlust remains.

Still obsessed with languages and their systems, Birthday refers to these new songs as imperfective, referring to verb 'aspect' present in Slavic languages, which focuses on the current process, not a past event or a future result. He still feels strongly that it's about the journey, not the destination, a spirit still embodied by these songs.

Founded in Philadelphia by Andrew Thiboldeaux and Christopher Ward, Pattern Is Movement and its twelve year history map a vast territory of internal exploration and external output. As the band recorded a series of albums over the past decade — The (Im)possibility of Longing, Stowaway, and All Together— they also shifted in membership and in stylistic focus, eventually solidifying into a powerful duo: Thiboldeaux on Rhodes, synth, bass, and vocals, and Ward on drums. Deeply soulful and natively genre-defying, they toured extensively, joining bands like St. Vincent, The Roots, and Shudder to Think, before delving into their fourth album and, along with it, the brightest and darkest corners of composition, orchestration, and collaboration. Years in the making, Pattern Is Movement’s new album will be released on April 1st, 2014 by Hometapes.

Laser Background is a project about childhood. Every aspect of our adult lives is transformed by what we absorb during the sponge of our youth. And it is this precise molten window, still nestled & thriving within our brainscapes, that Philadelphia’s Andy Molholt delves into with Laser Background’s debut LP Super Future Montage.
“I wanted to create a psychedelic action/adventure LP,” says Molholt. “I look at Super Future Montage as a sort of mission statement, not just for Laser Background, but for life in general. I look at this album as my life’s work.”
Repetitive themes run rampant throughout the record, drawing parallels between birth, death, sleeping, waking, the monotony of the mundane & the peculiarity of the mystical. Molholt neatly wraps this colossal array into a confectionary web of confusion ripe for the tasting. “It’s a reminder of sorts, that existence is filled with beginnings & endings,” Molholt offers. “The human condition is basically one big lost & found. Once you really embrace the idea that security of any kind is an illusion, you can start to move forward & break new ground.”
Produced by Michael Johnson (Ape School, Lilys, Holopaw) & engineered by Michael Trillions (Norwegian Arms, Grandchildren), Super Future Montage pushes Laser Background into unexplored sonic territory, hijacking expectations & forcing the listener to come along for the ride. Echoing influences like Of Montreal’s Coquelicot & Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Molholt forges a sound both reminiscent & all his own, a post psychedelic avant-pop vacation. If past, present & future are the fruits of time, here Molholt has created his orchard. And in this warped universe, where time no longer matters, the flowers are constantly in bloom.

Night Panther is a pop disco band founded by two best friends, Farzad Houshiarnejad and Mike Cammarata as an outlet for their youth. Fueled by sex, synths and Phil Collins, an 8 track lp soon followed.